While I still spend more on hunting & catfishing, there is always a couple hundred set aside for feeding the birds & squirrels. I can and do, spend hours watching them out my kitchen window. I only wish I had a spot to watch them while here sitting at the computer desk.

i am going to get my feeders back out and start feeding them this week thats one thing i love is the birds i just havent got off my butt sins we moved hear but i see lots more birds hear so it will be intaresting to see what all comes to the feeders guess it will be back to trying to out smart the squirrels to the little pest

I don't mind the squirrels, they gotta eat too. I just set aside some corn & sunflower seeds for them. I have been setting out nuts every year for them too. They love raw peanuts, but I have read that it can be dangerous if it gets mold on them. They also love Hazelnuts/Filberts, however they are expensive. I planted some Hazelnut trees last spring, hoping it will cut my costs a bit. This year, I drove about 60 miles to my brothers house an picked a half pickup load of Black Walnuts, for them.

While I don't mind feeding them, I wish I didn't feel like I was wasting so much. They eat the corn at the feeder, but most of the nuts appear to get buried for later. I never see them go back and dig them up. Doesn't matter whether I set out only cup of nuts every day or so, all I see is them burying them. Obviously they are not starved, perhaps I need to "cut" them off for a few weeks. They do so love to eat the corn though, even though it is like candy to them and is not the best food for them.

I have a funny story about squirrels raiding a bird feeder. Years ago I worked in a garage and one of our customers was an elderly lady who lived in a cottage in the woods. She used to feed the birds throughout the year. She drove a Daf33 which was a little European car that had a variable pulley, belt drive transmission. Really weird little car.
Well she phoned one day to say that her car wouldn't move. We suspected one of the belts had snapped, so we towed it back to the garage and got it up on the hoist. Underneath was a large plastic pan that went from the front axle to the rear axle. It was held in place by about a dozen turnbuckles.
I started to undo these and got my buddy to hold the pan as I undid it all. All of a sudden his face went red and his knees began to buckle. Then he let go of the pan and about fifty pounds of moldy peanuts poured out all over him.
Apparently the squirrels had been visiting the bird feeders and storing the peanuts up underneath the car. They had eventually worked their way up into the pulleys and when the pulleys had opened as she went faster, the nuts had got jammed in there. She hadn't realized because the road went down a hill to her cottage so she had just rolled down into her drive.
My buddy never trusted himself to ever go underneath that car again.

When i was just a little guy growing up we had a pet squirrel.Yep a pet Squirrel.

We had this old couch that had the thin wood back on it.

When my parents went to replace that old couch with a new one as they were hauling it outside things started to fall out of it.The little dude had stored all kinds of stuff it there.Found that the backing had came loose and everything in the house that he could put in there was in there.From food to my toys.:smile2::smile2:

ive got bird feeders and squirel feeders out plus i plant a small patch of turnips for the deer.the turnips arent touched till after the first frost then the greens get a lot of sugar in them and the deer love them.didnt plant the turnips this year tho just got lazy so the deer are hitting my squirel feeders.

made a trip to farm and home this evening got 40lb of sunflower seed 40lb seed mix and 4 suit cakes going to put all the feeders up tomorrow thanks for this thread it got me back in the mood to watch the birds agen

We was talkin this morning about birds. haven't bought seed, but all the scraps are being tossed in the back yard. Looks like it's been swept. They'll eat most anything this time of year. Hate to put corn out, make me......well you know.:smile2::smile2::smile2: